The gold tree. With initials designed by Austin O. Spare & cut in wood by W. Quick

THE GOLD TREE

THE GOLD
TREE

BY
J'C'SQUIRE

WITH INITIALS DESIGNED

BY AUSTIN O. SPARE &

CUT IN WOOD BY

W. QUICK

LONDON

MARTIN SECKER
MCMXVII

c

ERTAIN OF THESE STUDIES

have appeared in the "Century Magazine,"

the "Oxford and Cambridge Review,"

the "Eye Witness," the "New Witness,"

the "New Statesman," and

" Mandragora."

PR.

6037

500 COPIES

TO

MY MOTHER

THE CONTENTS

THE GOLD TREE: P. 1

THE WALLED GARDEN : P. II

THE MARCH OF PROGRESS : P. 19

A SUMMER'S DAY: P. 31
A GOOD LITTLE BOY: P. 39

A DEAD MAN : P. 47
THE BOOKSHOP IN DREAMS : P. 53

DUTY: P. 61

A TALE FOR POSTERITY: P. 69
THE BASKET OF FLOWERS : P. 79
BARNETT AND HARRISON : P. 85

THE GOLD TREE

LL the years I was there I
had a room with Gothic
windows, very high in the
great old building. When
the leaves were out there
were no roofs or walls
within sight, and the room
was so high that, seated at
my window, I was almost
on a level with the upper-
most large branches of a vast
spreading elm, which stood right over against me and
dominated all the other trees in the thickly-wooded
gardens. When one was by the farther wall of the
room the moving green caves and promontories of the
great tree filled the whole space of the window ; but
leaning on the sill one saw it framed in sky with copses
and walks stretching away behind it.

I spent many hours watching that tree when, as often
happened, I was feeling too indolent for other occupations.
In bleak winter twilights, when its extended branches
rose in dark austerity amid the cold and wet, or toughly
struggled with a fierce wind, I saw it a self-reliant
Titan, a vegetable Prometheus, a dumb and vigilant spirit
without hope and without fear as the tempests swelled
and the menacing darkness came round. When spring
thrust away winter, and the clustered crocuses, yellow,
purple, and mauve, shone in the grass about its foot, faint
delicate veils spread over its branches, veils of buds which
presently broke forth into leaves. In summer it was a
great palace for birds. The rooks tumbled about its pin-

3

nacles at earliest dawn, and then it became alive with the
chatter of little birds, which made its bushy wall sway
and bulge and break as they swarmed in and out.
Usually when the edges of the western leaves shone with
sunset red, a companionless thrush sang there fitfully and
poignantly; and I would listen, wide-eyed and quiet, for'
getting time. Most of all, the great elm was beautiful in
the autumn, when it was clad in a glory of rich colour,
the magnificence of the fulfilment that precedes death.
But in all the autumns save the first I took little pleasure in
it, and could not look at it without a vague aching at the
heart.

Nature, that first autumn, must have struck some
happy and subtle equilibrium of sun and wind and rain.
Perhaps never since that great tree's third progenitor was
a sapling and the mortar was fresh on the college walls,
had just that unheralded miracle been achieved by just
that impalpable baknce of heat and atmospheric pressure,
of moisture and light. I did not speculate about this ; I
had no inclination to dissect the beautiful thing I saw. But
every morning I woke with the marvel gently waving
before my eyes, a tree of pure and stainless gold ; and
every afternoon, when all around the walks and lawns
were tranced in lucid stillness, I sat on my sill and gased
at the transfigured multitudes of leaves.

At first the tree's garment was thick and profuse. It
lay, one would say, in mounded waves and beaches, still
slightly stained with remembrances of the late summer,
the dry dark greens and soiled dusty browns. Now and
then leaves fell. Each day there were more of them scat'
tered on the level grass around the roots ; but for two or
4

three weeks the dense masses of foliage on the branches
appeared undiminished and unthinned. Then, with swift
though imperceptible gradation, as October wore on, the
change came.

One afternoon I saw with a sudden joyous pang that
the tree had changed into something more beautiful than
anything I had ever seen in my life. Chinks of sky were
everywhere visible between the twigs, and the leaves had
all gone a uniform gold. It was not the heavy gold of
opulent stuffs from Italian looms ; it had no tinge of
brown or crimson. It was splendid ; but the splendour
was pale and pure and spiritual. Here, in an immense com-
plex pattern, were thousands of leaves of ethereal gold.
They were all thin and smooth and perfectly shaped.
They were all distinct ; yet they seemed, though so clear
and finely edged, weightless and insubstantial. The
tree was a vision of that perfection that dwells always as
a longing in some recess of the soul, and that is scarcely
ever realised in any material embodiment. So for seven
days it remained.

Nothing marred it. Every day was mild, radiant,
exquisitely peaceful; the sky was of that clean autumnal
blue which has something of the quality of silver, the
shining blue that in the fall of the year broods maternally
over all tranquil places, the remote yet consoling blue that
is closest to the spirit of old gardens and moss-grown
statues and fountains forgotten by man. Hour by hour I
sat staring at the gold against the far asure; and the only
motion visible was the gentle motion of the leaves that fell
like great gold petals. They seemed to fall quite evenly and
rhythmically ; one by one, without hurry, they floated

5

gently down through the windless air with a slow con'
tinuous magic that made an almost intolerably wonderful
harmony with that other magic of the motionless lovely
colour. Twilight came over, and dimly I could see them
falling still ; and when night closed in and the tree was a
confused web against the starry spaces I knew that they
still fell, evenly and rhythmically, like great petals, floating
down to death.

The gold leaves became sparser. The spaces of sky be'
came wider. Each leaf was outlined yet more clearly and
definitely against the silvery blue. Perfection was perhaps
most perfect when the leaves on the ground far below lay
in such heaps that those on the boughs stood out each a
single paten of gold with a frame of blue between it and
the next, but still a host in number. Their fragile and
ravishing beauty breathed such tenderness that involuntary
tears came to my eyes and my lips trembled. For this was
the most beautiful thing in the world, and as I gased it was
passing away.

A night came when the wind rose and the leaves with
no resistance were swept down in flying companies. Next
day a few golden stragglers alone clung to the bare boughs,
the dishevelled remnants of a great army that had gone along
its road. The tree of spiritual gold was no more ; there
remained a hard great tree strong to battle with the iron
winds of winter. Beauty, supreme beauty, had died; and
why had the heart survived it? There was a vague aching
in my breast as with fixed and filmy eyes I gazed unseeing
out of the window, over the forgetful paths and lawns, to a
world man never sees, but the nature of which he sometimes
obscurely apprehends through fragmentary symbols.
6

In none of the other autumns was the tree of gold to
be beheld. The hues of the great elm's vesture were year
by year luxuriant and gorgeous, but the pale and even and
stainless gold did not come again. The excitement of ex-
pectancy was always followed by the depression of dis-
appointment; I grew to feel that what I had seen once I
should not see again.

But may it not be, perhaps, that when I am an old
man, near my grave, I shall some day wander into the
gardens below my old window, and find a second time
the tree of gold, still and perfect, under a consoling
autumnal sky?

THE WALLED GARDEN

NCE upon a time, in a coun-
try where they spoke English,
there lived a king. He was
a very dull fellow with a
countenance like the face of
a clock, but he had an excel'
lent cook. So good was the
cook that they conferred
upon him the title of Gas-
tronomer-Royal, and gave
him a salary equal to £2,000
a year, reckoning, that is, not according to the nominal
value, but to the purchasing power of the money. The
cook, when middle-aged, had married a daughter of the
keeper of the Great Seal ; but she unhappily was one day
killed by that ferocious animal (it was as large as a walrus),
when visiting her parents, and left her husband a widower
with an only son, a small boy who spent much of his
time wondering about vain and foolish things. He won'
dered, for example, why he often heard of aeroplanes
turning turtle, but never of a turtle turning aeroplane ;
and also why it was that no one ever threw a third or a
quarter of a brick at anyone else. But to do him justice
these puwles did not always occupy his mind ; and some-
times when he was straying, as the Gastronomer-Royal's
son was allowed to do, in the gardens of the palace, he
would think seriously of his own future.

In the king's gardens there was one little walled gar-
den which faced south. Entering through a door in the
north wall you found flower-beds, full of red and yellow
tulips, in front of you, and flat fruit trees on the walls to

11

right and left. And if, amid the heavy and forgetful
scents of the flowers, you walked down the garden, over
the close turf between the beds, you came to the south
wall, in which was a doorway. In this doorway there
was no door, but only a little green wooden gate, breast
high ; and beyond the gate a flight of a few steps led down
to a brown river, narrow, but deep and swiftly flowing.
Smooth boulders divided the current ; and under the
farther bank, where dense foliage grew, there were dark
pools into which the quiet fish darted when a shadow
frightened them. " O swift dark water, O little trails of
foam, O wavering light on the old stones under the
branches, you are part of me, you stream from my heart,
and though I see you through my eyes you are always in
my breast." So the boy would have spoken had his feel'
ings bred thoughts that might be framed in speech.

He did not know what his feelings were. He was not
conscious enough of them to formulate them ; and many a
summer's day when the bees hummed in the garden and
swift birds in the blue sky threw fleeting shadows on the
earth, he sat on the steps staring at the river thinking
about what he would do when he was a man. He did not
intend to be a cook, even although his father's influence
might secure him the reversion of the high post he held.
But what should he be? Should he serve his country in a
peaceful way as a public official, rising at last, perhaps, to
be the monarch's chief adviser? Should he become a lawyer
and wear a wig? for he had always had the better of his
young companions in argument, and he thought that, were
he given fair opportunity, his vehemence and brilliance
in court would carry all before them. Commerce he scorned,
12

though he would play with the idea of commanding a trad'
ing vessel and exploring islands in remote seas; until he
remembered that the sea always made him sick. In the end
he returned constantly to dreams of military fame. Sir
Richard, the Commander'in'Chief, appeared before his ima'
gination, biasing in burnished steel and trotting down the
line with his lips set and his eyes flashing command. There
lay his destiny and there a life gleaming and full.

At a suitable age he entered the army. He was en'
thusiastic about his profession and was so fortunate as to
go through three very sanguinary campaigns before he was
twenty 'five, one battle alone being memorable for the fact
that no fewer than a hundred thousand men perished on
each side, the result being indecisive. For a daring and
successful disobedience of orders in this action he was
reprimanded and promoted; in the next war he was again
promoted; in short, he became a field 'marshal at an age
unprecedented in that country or in any other. His alert'
ness and modesty gained him general respect, and even
affection; and his simpk'minded concentration on his work
made it inevitable that when the aged Commander'in'Chief
died he should succeed to the vacant place.

For many years he headed the armies of that country
in the field. His hair was grilled and his face red and
wrinkled with exposure. None of his men underwent
more hardships than he; and when a stray shot maimed
him so completely that further active service was impossible
for him, all his fellow 'Citizens, in praising his magnificent
career, shook their heads and said that he would eat his
heart out now that he was on the shelf.

They were perfectly right. It happened that one day

13

when hobbling through the gardens of the palace — for, an
honoured pensioner, he had been allotted a suite of rooms
next the king's own apartments — he came to a doorway
in a wall and went through into a sunny garden, walled
around and full of flowers, and having at the far end a
little gateway with steps leading down to the river. His
heart moving strangely within him, he limped over the
grass, helped by his stick, and came to the gateway and
opened the gate and sat slowly down on the steps, an old
man who had been a boy. There in silence, as the calm
swift river rushed by, he looked on the water and the
stones and the overhanging boughs. They had remained
unchanged and so had he ; but his body had grown to its
prime and decayed. He thought of his youth, of the years
of warfare, of swords flashing, of tumultuous shouts and
curses, of midnight marches through torrential rains, of
entrances into conquered cities, of triumphs given him by
his own people. The names and faces of hundreds of men
came back to him ; of not one of whom could he truthfully
say that the man had understood him. All the great sue'
cesses had stirred him inwardly as much and as little as the
capture of a butterfly had stirred the boy. Life at one
period had been as life at another period ; mostly tedious,
sometimes melancholy, at moments just a little exciting ;
no period more than another had been immune from
disappointment, boredom and heartache, impatience at
men's stupidity and pettiness, contempt of clamour, and
doubts about justice and injustice. As the long scroll of
memory unfolded he felt that he had walked all his man'
hood among phantoms ; and he derived no pain from the
, reflection that his friends were dead and he himself already
14

half'forgotten, save as a legend. For he knew, watching
the stream, that it would have been better had he remained
all his life in that garden with that river which did not
change. The fountains of speech, now he would willingly
converse with the river, were rusted and choked; why,
when he was young, had they been sealed ? Why
had he been compelled to go round the world to find
himself ?

As he emerged from the garden, hobbling through the
door on his stick, and peering forward with sorrowful
eyes, he was seen by a young poet, skilled in the diagnosis
of diseases such as his. Touched with pity, and anxious
to exercise his skill on so tragic a subject, he wrote a long
poem in which he tried to express what he saw in the
old man's heart. It was not a very good poem, and most
of the stanzas were of this kind :

Moveless we climb, we rise yet stand we still,

New orbs of men we pierce, yet are the same ;
Though fates like Alexander's we fulfil,

And tread a blinding pinnacle of fame,
Fame dwells within us ; in our hearts the chill

Rests ; as of old unconquered is the earth ;

Empty is speech, in deeds there is no worth
And nothing in a name.

In another verse the poet declared

Evil is in the world ; a sinister scales
Trims in the heart of each ; it never fails
To keep its balance sure.

And as the young man was a poet, and, consequently,
vain about his occupation, he had some verses like this :

15

No man has many friends ; by Space and Time

We are limited, and by our narrow hearts.
In spite of cozening rune and globing rhyme

There is no wider kingdom than is Art's.
Man's love, unsuccoured by her arm sublime,

May not encompass much nor speak to many ;

Her aid, her aid alone it is that any
Diviner power imparts.

O you who have despised but never sung,

Who have superbly hated, swayed and striven :
This bitter immortality of the tongue

Can you in last clear vision deem it heaven ?
Even as you conquer, are they not outwrung,

The last weak drops of the sponge of happiness ?

Would you not rather have dwelt in idleness,
In full oblivion even ?

But all that, you may possibly say, sprang from the bias
of one who was not naturally a man of action.

16

THE MARCH OF PROGRESS

HRIST, as yet, was not even a
prophecy; and the races which
were to fight in the Trojan
War had not reached the Medi'
terranean. . . .

It was the day of the Sun-
God's festival in the capital city
of Atlantis, and since dawn the
crowds in the streets had grown
steadily denser, and all the roads
leading in from the country dis'
tricts had been choked with carts, filled with holiday
makers and decorated with branches and fillets of wool.
As midday approached the multitude of men and women
who lined the miles of the Temple Way, each clad in
white, and wearing the yellow disk which was the sun's
symbol hung by a chain around the neck, were pressed
together to the point of suffocation ; and the chatter of
their voices made a noise like that of rolling waves. The
Sun'God himself burnt fiercely from a quivering sky, pale
towards the zenith, but very blue over the flat roofs and
the trees. The Way was straight and broad, and paved
with wide, white blocks of marble; and the erect soldiers,
spears at rest, whose motionless brass'protected bodies
kept back the heaving masses behind, could, when they
turned their heads, see at the far southern end of it the
massive square buildings of the Temple, and, behind the
Temple, the middle and upper courses of a gleaming white
pyramid, as high as a small hill.

On that pyramid, at the third hour after noon, the High
Priest was to cut, with an obsidian knife, the throats of six

19

young men and six girls. These had been, according to
custom, chosen from amongst the most physically perfect
of their age in the whole Empire of Atlantis. Their flesh
would be cut; they would bleed to death on that high altar;
their bodies would be burnt; and the day would end.

Three men stood on a balcony over the tall portico of
a villa overlooking the tumult. The heavy square pillars of
the portico, covered with bright geometrical patterns, stood
right on the road; the other three sides of the house were
surrounded by a large garden, full of trees. Two of the
men were middle-aged, one tall, lean, and determined-look -
ing, the other shorter and corpulent; but the third was a
youth. His dark hair was tossed back from a bony face;
his eyes were deep set and intense, and his lips broad and
sensitive. Many of the little faces below turned up to'
wards them, for they were well-known and of the nobility ;
but they themselves looked out over the roaring crowds
and the broad road that drove far to the left and right with
eyes for no individual in the scene. All the city, except
only the public buildings, was of one-storied houses ; trees
were plentiful ; in the distance to the south was the mighty
group of the Temple-buildings ; to the east the horizon was
cut by the line of the monolith that stood in the royal
gardens ; and in the haze of the distance straight in front of
them, over the miles of roofs and a short interval of plain,
they could just see a gleam or two of water and a dark
little patch that they knew to be the assembled masts of
hundreds of ships in the port. In the splendid light the
panorama was opulent, settled, inspiring. It looked as though
nothing could disturb it. The tall man grasped the parapet
with his hands and his gaze ranged the prospect with an
20

energetic complacency. " Well, Colcan," he said to the
young man, " we of Atlantis have something to be proud
of. Civilisation can scarcely go much farther."

Colcan the poet was leaning on his elbows, looking
thoughtfully and with an expression that was hardly as
happy as the occasion justified, at the unending crowds.
He did not turn whilst he replied quietly: "Yes, Bardath,
ours is an active race " ; and, as he resumed his reverie, his
companion looked significantly at the stouter man, whose
face was now wet with the heat. They were fond of their
young friend, but they both knew that he " disapproved "
of many things, and probably of this. For he wast. eccen^
trie, and unwilling to think like other men.

Their guess was correct. Colcan the poet, his chin on
his hands, was shuddering at the gaiety of the city. He
thought of the powerful procession which would soon come
into sight, and pass below and on to the end of the Way ;
the chariots, the files of bearded priests, the King leading
his white horse, and then, with the High Priest at their
head, the lonely little company £>f victims, with a freezing
hopelessness in their eyes. It seemed strange to him that,
as a boy, he had come every year with his parents and
watched the pageant with delight. Then — in what year he
did not remember — some change had happened in his brain,
and the agony of each ensuing year's festival had left be^
hind it a sediment of continual unease and occasional acute
pain. How incredible it was ! These kindly thousands,
these sedate functionaries, this ordered civilisation with all
its complex machinery of subsistence, of law and custom ;
that it should all be in essence a conspiracy, the crown of
whose achievement was this ritual of torture and murder.

21

One year, when the silence of the passing victims was on
the crowd, he had heard a sudden shriek and a hubbub,
and then there had been a surge of the crowd to his left.
"Poor woman, her son must have been taken," whispered
the people around him ; and then the murmurs of com'
passion had faded away in the cheering that greeted the
African elephants who, with the royal archers on their
backs, cumbrously towered along at the rear of the pro*
cession. That mother's torment was unforgettable. Prob'
ably she was dead now, and her griefs did not matter ; but
here was the eternal infamy going on, the same blind
acceptance, the same consecration of unspeakably bestial
cruelty, the same immeasurable stupidity. He was sick at
heart as he thought of it, and, as the sound of beaten gongs
rumbled from the distance, he rose, said he was going into
the garden, and left his companions alone to watch the
pageant.

Colcan the poet descended a short stair, crossed a
courtyard, and passed under a gateway on to a terrace of
veined agate that overlooked the garden. No birds were
singing ; the trees were still in the heat ; and, above the
less aggressive clamour of the crowd, there penetrated to
his ears the ever 'approaching fury of the Holy Gongs.
The clanging swelled and swelled until it smote his ears
like blows. Then it passed, and receded, and diminished
towards its goal. Colcan shivered and felt like vomiting.
The doomed were moving towards their end. Their
white faces and dragging feet were nearing the temple ;
high above them, if they had still the power to look up,
they could now see the immense, dominating face of the
pyramid, the converging line of the climbing steps, and,
22

where the summit pricked the sky, the tiny square jut
made by the slab of the huge altar. As once more he
saw in his mind the fainting bodies in an inescapable ma<-
chine, the venerable priest, the binding, the incantation,
the swift slice of the knife, the blood jetting over the
stone, he sprang up and began walking feverishly to and
fro with his palms pressed over his ears and his forehead
sweating. He had sat down again when Bardath and MAI
stepped out from the house. Suppressed excitement had
exhausted them. They lay down on two divans, and
Bardath called for cooling drinks and fans. He and M61
remained for some minutes in languid silence; they re*
freshed their eyes with the fountain and the inky green
of the cedars, and turned occasionally to scrutinise the
face of their companion. He sat with his chin in his hands
and his elbows on his knees, looking into an imaginary
distance. At last Bardath spoke :

"I suppose, Colcan," he said, "that you are still brood'
ing over what you will call the iniquity of human sacri'
fice ? "

Colcan, in a polite but agitated tone, said that he was.
Then his anguish forced its way out. Suddenly flashing
at Bardath, " What else do you call it ?" he cried fiercely.
He contracted his eyes; "Oh, it's horrible," he gasped,
" I feel unclean."

Bardath looked at him whimsically and a little pater*
nally. "My good Colcan," he remarked, "do not distress
yourself so. There are worse things in the world than this.
It is a beautiful day. Have something to drink." "Yes,"
said M61, "that's what you want."

Colcan, with his mouth drawn and his hands trembling,

23

stood up and faced them. "I implore you," he said, "you
do not know how brutal you are being and how men like
you hold things back. I ask you, do you dare to imagine
what these victims ttvday have gone through ?"

" I prefer not to," said Bardath, raising his knee to ad'
just the strap of his sandal, "at any rate it is all over now."

"Oh no," cried the boy again, "it isn't all over. It's
going on. The air is infected by it. We all reek of it. The
State is built on it. It is one great edifice of murder ....
And as for us," he went on bitterly, "we don't even
believe it does any good. We simply let this horror go on
and on and we don't know what it's for. We don't even
believe in the gods.

Mol's puffy face went red and he frowned. " Please
don't get so excited, Colcan," he said, "I sympathise with
you to some extent, but you need not be blasphemous."

Their two solid figures grouped together suddenly
seemed to Colcan to typify all the evil of the world. He
felt a fire inside him. "Oh! " he thought, "My God! My
God! . . . I hate you both. . . . You filthy beasts." Then
he checked himself and, in a voice which his self 'restraint
made tremble, said "Would you, Bardath, if you were
making a world, put this into it?"

Bardath was a considerate man, but he had the courage
of his convictions. "Yes, Colcan, I should," he said.
" Death has to come to us all some time and the mere in'
fliction of death is nothing. Andwit is my belief that
humanr character is such that familiarity with death and
pain is the only thing which can keep it from softening
into indolence and decay. The emotions of the sacrifice
and the slight risk of exposure to it that each of us takes
24

in his youth, have an incalculably strengthening effect. I
believe that the whole power of Atlantis, and ultimately
the welfare of all mankind, is founded upon this institution
which your hyper-sensitiveness cannot stomach."

Fat M61 was rather sentimental. He, too, had had his
moments of doubt, and he possessed few theories. He cleared
his throat and, failing to look either of his friends in the
face, said : " I don't know about that, Bardath. Suffering
is very terrible, and I admit with Colcan that human
sacrifice has its seamy side. All I say is that it always has
been and always will be. So we had better get all the
benefit out of it that we can."

The sunset withered, the after-light waned, and the
breeze of evening twice swished in the garden trees. In
the royal palace the slaves were already arranging couches
for the hundreds of guests who were expected at the
banquet which once a year, on the day of this Solemn
Festival, was given in honour of the foundation and pre-
servation of the city and of the awful rites with which,
from remotest time, the favour of the gods had been secured.
The populace, that happy evening, also celebrated after
their manner; and the three friends, sitting on their ter-
race, could hear the beginnings of the night's merriment
in the neighbouring streets ; and they knew that in count'
less homes the lamps were being lit and the tables spread,
and the children, allowed for once to stay up, were laugh-
ing and chattering in expectation of the cutting of the
ceremonial cake with a wooden model of the sacrificial
knife. It grew dark. The three men rose. Bardath and
M61 were going to the banquet and retired to make them-
selves ready.

25

But the poet Colcan walked away out of the city into
the fields. The noise grew fainter behind him, the stars
brighter over his head ; and he walked until he came to a
hill which hid the lights of the town and he was alone in
a dark, wide place under the huge star^scattered heaven.
His heart swelled painfully because of the horror of the
things that had been done since morning ; and worst of
all, perhaps, to him was not the agony of the poor victims
who, like their murderers, accepted their fate as part of the
eternal order of nature, but the blindness and callousness
of those who could inflict such suffering, could calmly
mutilate, or watch whilst others did so, the bodies of bound
and helpless human beings. In truth he could not deny
that his countrymen, from princes, magistrates and priests
downwards, were not all ogres: he remembered Gorco,
the amiable old High Priest, who had often patted his
head and encouraged his studies when he was a boy.
What appalling curse had been spoken over the cradle of
the race that such frightful perversity of unconsciousness
should afflict it ? What end could any god achieve by
it ? Why did not heaven extirpate mankind at once and
have done with it ? What was the use of anything whilst
such brutality was universal and remained unquestioned ?
Could any gods exist at all ?

As he walked, the briskness of the exercise, the cool'
ness of the wind, and the consoling company of the quiet
night, calmed him ; and he fell imperceptibly into a milder
and happier train of thought. He dreamed of a day when
the eyes of civilised mankind should have been opened ;
when the streets of a later Atlantis should know nothing
of the great pyramidical altar, and a more enlightened
26

priesthood should look back in uncomprehending disgust
on the sacrificial knife. It was a wild dream, and he knew
it. Did human nature ever really change ; was there, in
fact, any hope at all that an institution so ancient and
hallowed as the Altar of Blood should ever be abandoned?
He knew he was dreaming, but it comforted him to dream ;
and deep in his mind was a conviction, based on nothing
more than the strength of his own longing, that what
ought to come must come.

Centuries before Homer was born they buried Colcan.
He had reached a great age: his songs were sung through'
out the length and breadth of Atlantis ; the peasants sang
them at harvest'time, and the sailors as they pulled at their
ropes. The Government built him a large tomb by the
sea's edge ; and as an especial tribute to his fame and solace
to his shade they killed a young girl at the doorway of the
grave.

When a few more kings had reigned, the earth trembled,
and an immense tidal wave swept over the whole continent
of Atlantis and submerged it

27

A SUMMER'S DAY

MILE northwards of that
raucous place Scheveningen
the dunes increase in height
and the flat sands are bare of
tents and almost free of people.
Even had they not been on
their honeymoon the pair of
them would have fled from
the hotels, the fruit'Stalls and
the multitudinous parasols ;
as it was, they sought com'
parative solitude as a matter of course. Face downwards
in the long grass they lay in a hollow of the sand cliff's
edge and looked down on the sands and the sunlit sea.
To the hazy horizon the waters stretched away as smooth
as satin ; but a few yards from shore long low ripples came
into being, to file placidly and evenly inwards and break
with sleepy splash.

Their cheeks were flushed, their eyes shone happily as
they lay. They watched the passage of the day. The sea
was vacant except for a brown^sailed fishing'boat that
hung motionless for hours in the middle distance ; and long
stains of smoke slumbered along the horizon. Far to the
left were the thronging black specks of the populous
bathing'place ; but here a few stray families sat on the
sands reading or playing, and only occasionally did some
man or child wander along and paddle in the water for a
while.

For the hundredth time that day he turned his head
and, fervently pressing her hand, looked smiling into her
eyes. A delighted crow from a small erector of sand castles

31

below made them both laugh happily. " Isn't it lovely ?"
she said. "Yes," he replied, "I wish it would last for
ever."

There was a long silence, during which each pursued
a pleasant train of thought. At last he spoke again: " Do
you remember that first summer's day two years ago ; your
old blue hat and our silly cross'purposes and then how
happy we were when we knew." " Oh, of course I do,
you old stupid," said she. " The day," he went on, " was
as lovely as this. The sky was as blue. The wood was as
quiet as the sea is now. I felt then just as I feel now, that
nothing would ever change. Of course I know that it will
really, but I cannot conceive our leaving each other. I feel
as though we could not stop living or even grow old."
" Yes," she replied, " I feel like that, too, in a way. Tm
sure that no one ever dies unless he wants to. I think to
desire to live is to live . . . how could we die when we
can live like this." Lips parted, they looked at each other
from under languid eyelids.

They were again watching the sea shining in the late
afternoon sun when a little shout attracted their notice.
A big man in a cap, with his trousers rolled up to his
knees, was wading far in and reaching out into the water
with the handle of an umbrella. As a ripple turned, some'
thing white flashed in the water. The man, catching it
with his crook, began tugging at it and walking backwards.
It looked like a small wet sheet with something heavy at
the end of it. A little wave splashed and retired ; and with
a last heave and a short backward run the man with the
hook slid his catch along the wet flat sand and drew it up
to a dry place. His form screened a part of it, but from
32

the dunes they could see a stiff white limb and a forlorn
peak of wet shirt. " Good God, it is a dead body," he said,
with a slight feeling of sickness. The girl's face paled and
she grasped his hand more tightly as she stared down at
the beach where the discoverer was waving his arms and
shouting incomprehensible words. Two little children with
bare legs came running up and stood, their spades clenched,
gating at the sea's refuse. Then men and women on the
nearer sands, catching sight of the motionless group, began
to walk up. The animation of the proceedings began to
get interesting, and all feeling of nausea left the watching
pair. When the group had become a thick black knot it
was obvious to people in the distance that something most
unusual had happened, and far away little black and white
figures hurriedly moved, men and women who broke into
an excited run as they approached. Now bicyclists began
to arrive ; and, as the crowd grew larger, the approaching
streams of running people became thicker. It seemed at last
as though the whole population of the thronged strand
southward were heaving along towards the centre of
curiosity.

From above it was no longer possible to see anything
of the corpse, and the whereabouts of its finder were only
indicated by the poise and direction of the caps and hats
where the crowd was thickest. There was great pressing
and squeezing and murmuring. In a pure heaven the sun
shone softly on a tranquil sea. The couple on the dunes
gased down like persons who watch a cinematograph
show. There was something very mechanical about this
nucleus of attraction, this centripetal motion of human
atoms, this steady accretion to a magnetic centre ; and

33

they were too far off to be touched humanly by distinct
significant words.

Far along the beach there was a stir more vigorous than
ever. Something was rushing along. Nearer, it was seen
to be a number of men with a vehicle. Careering fiercely,
sweeping everybody aside, came the ambulance corps.

They pushed through the crowd to the centre where
their coloured headgears were prominent. For some
minutes affairs were at a standstill. Doubtless they were
examining the body and trying restoratives. They were
too late, perhaps days too late. At last, commanding the
people to fall back, they lifted the body; it shone dully
white as it was deposited on the cart and covered over. A
shout, a strain, and a gallop, and they were off to the town.

It was half an hour before the crowd entirely melted
away again, for every late comer had inquiries to make of
those more early on the scene, and the hero of the umbrella
had many things to say. Waving his weapon to emphasise
points, he remained long, being one of the last to go. Thus
he had first seen something; thus he had waded in ("the
waves splashed over my trousers although they were well
tucked up "); and thus he had dragged his find to the shore
and felt ill as it lay at his feet. Finally, his energies and the
curiosity of his auditors exhausted, he departed.

Once more in the light of the low sun there was no
one on the stretch of sand, now ploughed by a thousand
feet, except two or three children, industrious with their
spades and buckets, and a man, behind the fair, who had
strolled along and settled down for a pipe before going
home, unconscious of what had been happening where he
sat. The lovers lay still without saying much. Their eyes
34

were fixed on the setting sun with its girdle of small pearly
clouds above the many 'Coloured sea. They were thinking
of an unknown man drowned. Perhaps he was a holiday-
maker, by now identified, who on the previous day had
walked about the sands; perhaps a sailor who had fallen
overboard many miles away, and had been washed about
dead for days, turning and turning in the water. In a city
or village abroad there were people writing letters to a man
who would not receive them.

The sun sank, and quietly night came over. All the
voices had drifted away, and the stars shone on the pale
sands and the faintly- washing margin of the sea. The two
could have lingered all night with such beauty, but they
were hungry. They began walking back to the town.
When they started they talked a little of what they had
seen, and joked wanly about the automatism of the crowd;
but the air was fresh and the stars bright, and it was rather
fun trying to take short cuts amid the sandhills, and they
were feeling very happy and immortal. So very soon they
forgot all about it; for youth and good fortune will be
served.

35

A GOOD LITTLE BOY

N adolescence and early ma'
turity a man usually allows
his boyhood to pass out of
remembrance. His mental
operations are extensive and
thrusting; he is obsessed by
his own intellectual develop -
ment ; he seldom glances
backwards; he regards the
child of the past as the mere
larva which has evolved into
a higher and more brilliant creature, a being with unequalled
powers and superb sensibilities; a prince of created things.
He can and may recall some of the child's habits and
journeys, some of its grievances and deceptions, jealousies,
ambitions and prides. These by an effort of memory he is
able to recover, though they are mostly dead to him, like
the occasions, the chance concatenations of unimportant
events, that caused them. But he does not trouble to re'
member the child's most intense and intimate experiences,
the adventures not directly related with other persons, the
joys that arose from fresh and unhabituated contact with
nature. There comes a time when things change. After a
man has outgrown his first enthusiasms and illusions he
learns to reverence his own childhood. It is invested with
a new and almost sacred interest for him.

On the long line of solitary meditation or in the drag'
net of miscellaneous conversation some stray reminiscence
from early years is brought shining to the surface ; and it is
not again thrown away. By degrees such memories accu'
mulate until there is a coherent fabric of them, recollections

39

of impressions long since received by a being who fbrmu'
lated nothing and deliberately recorded nothing. A man
exhausts culture ; he discovers that Art is but a makeshift
by which the sophisticated painfully struggle to recreate
sensations that well spontaneous in the souls of the young.
He comes to realise that the best and truest aesthete is the
child. Memory teaches that the natural child, ignorant of
culture which is born of comparison, analysis and classifi'
cation, breathes in beauty as the plant its proper air ; sound
and colour and form and the play of light fill him with
wonder and joy, and he does not attempt or dream of
definition or explanation.

* * * *

The child, very young, was given balls and skeins of
coloured wools with which it was intended he should
make reins for human horses. He was indifferent and
clumsy about the manufacture, which was conducted by
means of pins stuck into large corks with holes in them ;
but of the colours he never tired. They were bright and
varied. Vermilion on a skein would merge into splendid
orange and that into a pure yellow and that into green;
or a pale celestial blue would pass into a blue more gorgeous,
and that into purple, which would grade — and the marvel'
lous surprise of the changes never palled — into a scale of
glorious browns. Here shape had nothing to do with his
pleasure ; in those simple ropes of wool the dasalingly vivid
colours were almost disembodied, like the hues of a luminous
cloudless sunset. The child did not know what he was
doing; but he would hold the skeins in his hands, his eyes
very still, sighing from excess of delight. Colour was his
divinity, which took him out of himself; contemplation of
40

it consumed him ; unconsciously he strove to plunge into
the heart of the colour as the religious mystic into the bosom
of God. Even then he knew, though he did not put his
feelings into words, something of the grief of unattainment ;
for, with all his straining of heart and eyes, he could never
reach the inmost core of these heaving waves of splendour.
His elders would remark : " Isn't he a good little boy ; he
amuses himself so nicely."

Sometimes he was very happy by the sea. He loved the
rock'pools with their red and green anemones, and the
stones in the shingle, all of which were beautiful and never
two alike. Especially he loved those calm days when one
can look along a level glittering sea and the sails on the
horizon are like little clouds. But in the country he was
always happy; he would steep himself in the scent and the
warm shadows of barns; great rugged tree^trunks and
smooth lawns were never lacking, and there were always
delightful particular places where he could go by himself.
In one place a little path took him out of sight of the
low house to a piece of waste land covered with ragged
clumps of bramble and thorn. On the farther side was a
swamp. Out of the water, where ridged newts swam,
sprang green sword 'like reeds and mottled yellow irises,
strong flowers, sublimely fashioned, which seemed to return
his gase. On the moist hummocks of the bank grew
multitudes of rushes, narrow javelins each tufted with a
brown tuft at the side. He would pluck one and strip off
its green skin, drawing out a long soft kernel almost weight'
less and as white as whitest snow. This he would lay
across his hand and admire; or draw it over his cheek and
lip for the exquisite softness of it ; and then he would

41

break it. There was something that moved him profoundly
when at the smallest tension it almost melted into fragments.
He was experiencing the poignancy and loveliness that
cling to all that floats and to everything that is evanescent.

In another place, where he spent a long summer, there
was an orchard of old mossy trees, sunny and undisturbed,
with long green grass underfoot. The orchard made a
gentle valley for a little brook which curved peacefully
through its entire length, here so narrow that one could
step across it, and here broadening out into a bright shallow
pool reflecting the clouds and the sky. Hither he would
come day after day, no one knowing where he was, and
lie all the afternoon, face downwards on the bank, his hands
supporting his chin, in some spot where the sun fell through
overhanging leaves to the cool flowing water. He would
observe very intently the flies delicately wafting over the
surface, and the small fish, with heads pointing upstream,
waving gently in the current. More often, for from this
he derived most pleasure, he watched the rivulet's bed of
light'brown sand. Shadows would fleet across it as the
clouds went overhead, and now and then, most perfect
delight of all, a tiny ring of light, like a hollow star. It
never occurred to him that this was the reflection of a
bubble surviving from an elfin waterfall farther up ; it was
a beautiful mystery as it sailed slowly over the peaceful
sand under the clear water. In the evening he went to
bed with his skin slightly burning and his eyes tired; and
he slept dreamless.

The grown man can seldom lose himself. He criticises ;
he examines; he enjoys briefly. Beauty can pierce him
suddenly, it cannot often envelop him from dawn to
42

light. Surrender to beauty must be involuntary to be
complete ; purpose and self-consciousness break the bond
and the enchantment. We, with our intellect, must needs
separate ourselves from things; we know ourselves stand'
ing outside them and the separation engenders chillness.
The child alone, wise in his oblivion to facts and theories,
can reach a calm and abiding unity with the hidden world
of which the visible is the cloak. He walks with Beauty
daily and has no necessity for a creed.

43

A DEAD MAN

HE screaming of the gale had
dwindled into a fitful grumbling;
the recurrent boom and crash and
hiss of the sleepless North Sea on the
shingle below the cottage was sooth-
ing by contrast with the wild
elemental tumult that had been fill-
ing the hours after twilight. The
little window had ceased to rattle ;
the fire had pulled itself together and the lamp burnt up
comfortably. Probably the inhabitants of the fishermen's
hovels around had all gone to bed long ago ; the knowledge
of that, I cannot tell why, added to my feeling of seclusion.
In an arm-chair, with my dressing-gown around me, a
pipe in my left hand and a glass of warm liquor within
reach of my right, I settled down to the familiar book. It
had been my periodic, though never my continual, com-
panion during my later schooldays and ever since. Given
quiet and solitude, it had always the power of taking me,
without effort or delay, into another world.

Did I still smoke and feel the warm fire about my knees?
In a mechanical way; but my essential self was elsewhere.
Here was a world where shadows walked more vivid and
grim than any mundane creature, a sunless land reeking
with heavy vapours and populated with monstrous shapes
of disease and misery and sin. Here there were dark caves
where the soul was a prey to infamous insects ; gray fields
hissing at the beat of straight pillars of unending rain;
black lakes writhing with hideous coils; abysmal woods,
and winds that howled desolately around the graves of
the unhappy dead. Here, in a slimy soil, full of pits and

47

broken implements, lay great disjected limbs, fragments of
terrible marble splendour, half-buried in dark festering
ground whence sprang only rare clusters of heavy and
venomous blooms. Old blind men and women groped by
mouldering damp walls; miserable taverns, ill-furnished
and lit with smoky lanterns, accommodated companies of
the damned, ferocious and wretched, gambling at faded
green tables or holding haggard revels with out-worn
courtesans. Everywhere, beneath a sky as merciless as
iron, walked the poet, his shoulders bowed, his strong head
thrust forward in an intense and melancholy curiosity.
His profound eyes under their weary and compassionate
lids burned with a sombre lustre; his wide firm mouth
with its projecting lower lip wore an expression of imperial
sadness, of amusement without joy, tenderness without
illusion, and pity without hope.

Rocks, darkness, blood, poisonous fungi, the oily scales
of gigantic snakes, rotting bodies dead and alive, lovely
things gone purulent and a prey to armies of worms : these
things he beheld around him, and Remorse, Gloom and
Despair flew their sable standards on the battlements of
his brain. Yet as he lived in this nightmare country the
measure of its horror and infamy was the measure of the
sweetness of terrestrial regions and forms he had seen and
would not see again and of spiritual fountains he had
always thirsted for and would never know. With courteous
and precise cynicism on his lips, he thought of quiet
virginal chambers, of waters singing under the moon, of
terraces where taintless music sobbed into the open night,
of pure maternal mistresses with protecting arms and vigilant
eyes, of fields slumbering in the sunlight, of leagues of ocean
48

heaving under warm tremulous heavens, of hot ports,
gorgeous and perfumed, where forests of masts sprang by
the biasing quays, and palm-trees grew to the verge of the
glittering blue waters. And in more purged and abstract
mood he would dream of divine Beauty, throned in plains
of inaccessible asure, remote from the squalor and vice of
the actual, sublimely placid, Beauty who never smiled and
never wept. . . .

The lamp burned more dimly, and I closed the book.
Chin on hands, elbows on knees, I stared into the sleepy
fire and thought of him. He had died long before I was
born, after complete paralysis had immured him, a living
corpse, for many months. Nevertheless I knew each line
of his face, each expression of his features, every subtle
inflection of his inner voice, every pang that gnawed at
his breast. I could not conceive that dissolution could
touch him or that death could work a change in him; I
felt that his spirit was eternal and constant, more durable
and more certain than the stars and their systems. So I
mused, as I had done from time to time for years.

With a start and a swift fearful throbbing of the blood
I sat up and sharply turned. Was it a step behind me?

The flames softly lapped and the coals made pin-point
crackles; outside in the darkness the sea still boomed and
washed on the shingle. Everything in the corner by the
stair was in its place; the fire shone as usual on the
edges of chair and box and picture frame. Yet my heart
shook and my limbs stiffened and the scalp under my hair
tingled chill as if at the touch of supernatural fingers; for
I knew there was something in the corner, an inaudible
sound, an invisible cloud.

49

Dry-lipped I spoke. I did not hear but, as it were, felt an
answer. It was he ; I knew it and my fear fell off me like
a cold sheet; gently joyous I whispered his name.

Sensible of nothing else, I looked at the place where I
knew he stood. With effortless mental vision I saw him.
Nothing of him had altered; the broad brow, the profound
eyes, the firm and melancholy mouth. I had no need to
speak again. He could read every thought, every friendly
impulse that brought tears of glad sorrow into my eyes.
Around his lips there hovered the wistfully cynical smile
of one who mocked all things and himself most of all, and
pitied all things but himself least. He had come for a friend
through a door, unlocked, for all I know, never before or
since. But though the smile still floated around his lips, his
deep eyes, when he perceived my voiceless inquiry, were
for a moment hard with unmingled suffering. It was as
though in his formal polite way he was speaking: " I am
who I was and where I was. I long for the things I have
never seen and those I shall never see again. The beauty
I find is evil and pestilent; the beauty I search for I shall
not find. The springs of the milky way are salt to my
palate as the rivers of the earth; and, like the apples of
life, the golden stars have turned to ashes in my hand."

The shadowy air in the room quivered. Solitude most
evident poured over me. I knew he had gone away, the
hunger for the unattainable in his heart, a lonely voyager
faring for ever through an alien universe.

I felt as though my body did not belong to me. With
an arm on the mantelpiece, I kicked moodily at the fender ;
then with an automatic laugh I prepared to go to bed.
There was no desire of any kind left in me.
50

THE BOOKSHOP IN DREAMS

HERE is an old bookshop I visit in
my dreams. Waking I have never
been, I think, to the town in which
it is situated; whether I shall ever
chance to find it I do not know.

I always reach the place by the
same route. I find myself in a main
thoroughfare, sunny and pleasant,
but fairly full of vehicles, people, and
busy shops. With the sun on my left I walk up the bright
side of the road for a short distance, until I come to a
turning which leads me into a small street of retired houses
with green shutters and green, brass'knockered doors. At
the end of this street there is a large square or, rather, a
crescent with a straight base, and a wooded luxuriant
garden in the middle. The curved and farther side, along
which I have never walked, but the middle parts of which
can just be seen through the trees, consists of tall grey
houses ; but if one turns to one's left along the straight side
one passes smaller houses of only two stories, with flower'
pots in the windows and grained brown doors. Nearly at
the end of it is the shop, the only one in the row. Why
it should be there I never think of asking except when I am
awake.

The shop is low. Curiously, I have never noticed — and
it is futile when waking to resolve to notice during the
next dream — whether there is any name above the
window. Perhaps the old man who lives there has a
name; I cannot say. But how well I know everything
else about the exterior! The windows full from top to
bottom of old books, large and small, somewhat dusty, but

53

by no means repellently dirty; the bench along the pave'
ment heavy with books ; and the four tall rows of little
shelves in and beside the doorway. All these books out'
side detain me, for all are old though not, as a rule,
precious. On the bench are folios and thick quartos, in
entrancing covers of yellowing vellum tooled with gold or
rock'like brown leather with ridges at the backs like the
ribs of stately ships. "Not here, O Apollo, are haunts
meet for thee"; these great galleons of print carry not
sandal wood or peacocks or Dionysian grapes ; they are
histories of the wars in the PayS'Bas, commentaries on
Isaiah, or complete collections of the works of Eusebius or
Origen. My eyes pass over them and stoop where there
is a binding especially choice or especially ragged ; I pick
the book up, both hands often being necessary, and glance
over the expansive pages. Now and then I linger to admire
some type clearer and nobler than any type of modern
designing, or some paper which has retained its white
beauty for three hundred years. But I do not stay long
by the bench.

Nothing makes any noise in my dreams. I hear no
traffic or sounds of passers by. In interest or amusement
I open my lips and smile; but I never hear my voice.
The pages do not rustle when turned, and my feet are
soundless as I move down to the shelves around the door.
There it is that my heart flutters with joy; hundreds of
octavos and little duodecimos fill these shelves, and every
one is desirable, a real book, quietly and soundly covered,
and worthy to have been written. I have never seen there
one bearing a date as late as eighteen hundred, and their
titk'pages, engraved with Cupids and medallions, allegorical
54

figures, Minervas and sprays of formal leaves, attest that
they were printed in cities with good Latin names,
Londinium, Lugdunum of the Batavians, Amstelaedamum,
Lipsia, and Colonia. Here are Delphin classics bulging
with notes written by superb pedants now gone out of
remembrance; Jesuit manuals of instructions; handbooks
of duelling and good manners ; translations of Sappho,
Anacreon, Plutarch and Terence into French and Jacobean
English; and poets of many kinds. The eighteenth'Century
French abound — Piron, Gr6court, Dorat, Gentil'Bernard,
a debonair and ironic crew printed with a delicate dignity
appropriate to them. I put back Quarks His Divine
Fancies and take out Sir Richard Lovelace; I put back
Lovelace and take out Waller in two courtly little volumes.
I should like to possess each one that I handle; I do not
know what curious power checks my covetousness and
makes me restore them to their shelves. Vaguely I de'
termine that I will have many of them, but yet I do not
pick out and set apart the ones I want. Passing my fingers
sensuously along the backs of an upper row, I step into
the dark shop.

From the outside you would not think that the shop
inside could be so high ; but the floor of the upper story
does not exist; the whole of the inside of the building is
one large room. At a table in the corner behind the
window sits the old man with his straggly grey hair,
screwed-up eyes and heavy spectacles perched low on the
thick warty nose that dominates his square chin and wide
clenched slit of a mouth. He looks up from his reading as
I enter — he is holding an enormous folio with both hands,
his thumbs sticking upwards — nods slightly but firmly, and

55

then resumes his reading. I look all around. From the
floor to the dark raftered roof the place is full of books;
shelves line every wall, and the floor is so heaped that
there is scarcely room to move the worm-eaten ladder that
gives one access to the upper tiers. It would be impossible
to see any of the books, except those near the door, were
it not that a lighted candle in an old green tin candlestick
stands ready for use on a pile of books.

I go slowly around holding the candle aloft. The old
man, bent over his tome, takes no notice of me ; the candle
sends great shadows flying about, shadows that fight with
the daylight near the door but are unchallenged in the far
recesses. The thousands of books are of all sises from the
hugest to the most minute; they are so wonderful that I
could fling my arms around them, dusty as they are, a
shelf-full at a time, and hug them in ecstasy ; yet I am
never surprised that they are there. I cannot remember
how often I have seen any particular book; but at one
time or another I have reverently taken from those pillared,
deep-brown, softly-shining files, all the great old books
that ever were in the world — vast, marvellously printed
early Venetians with endless wood -cuts; bound illuminated
monastic texts of Chaucer ; folios of the Elisabeth drama-
tists ; Caxtons and Wynkyn de Wordes, a battalion of
them suddenly come upon in some low obscure corner;
Tudor black-letters of poets who may have owned these
very copies; manuscripts in Greek, Latin, Italian, Old
French, Anglo-Saxon, and Gothic. Concentrate my brain
now as I may, I cannot recall that I ever noticed label or
pencilling of price on any of them; yet I have always
known to certainty that any of them was mine for a
56

ridiculous price, sixpence or a shilling. I stay for hours
and find it hard to go; returning again and again to some
dark corner where the candle brings into mysterious
brightness the name of some famous dead man's book,
here anchored in a secluded port, breathing a strange calm-
ness as though somehow aware that no vicissitude could
bring it harm. The spell is difficult to break, but at last,
reluctantly, I resolve to pick out an armful of the finest
books, carry them away and come back another time; for
in a place so unfrequented, where I have never seen a
purchaser, it would assuredly be safe to leave things a
little while without risk of their disappearance. I turn to
speak to the preoccupied old man ; and then I awake with
a feeling of grief and loss, and resentful against myself for
having delayed my purchases so long.

Most excellent bookshop, more magnificent than all
others, I may enter you in my dreams this very night. I
know every pane in your windows, every beam in your
roof, every great undisturbed heap of books on your floor,
and all the dim shelves that climb to that cave of your
roof. Yet I do not think that I have ever trodden the
streets of the town where you are situated, and I do not
hope, save in dreams, ever to cross your threshold. And
the other day, as I was sitting before a fire doing nothing,
a chilling fancy (probably meaningless and absurd) came
into my head as to the name of the old man who sits in
his corner reading, with gnarled and immobile face.

57

DUTY

HEY had told William that he must
nDt go into the coal'Cellar; for when
he had been there he had made
himself very filthy. Being a little boy,
with a considerable sense of duty,
and a dislike of breaking his pledged
word, he did try his best to keep
away from it. But that grimy door
at the end of the kitchen passage had
a strong fascination; and at last, after an irksome smoky
fog had kept him indoors for two days, he was so bored
with everything that he crept down the stairs, hesitated,
glanced around, went on again, and finally, his heart
thudding because of his sin, opened the cellar door and
went into the gloom.

Just inside the door the feint rays of gaslight from the
misty passage gleamed on ridges of smooth coal; but round
to the right the darkness was intense, a soft hollow dark'
ness that revealed no farther wall, and was filled with a
sea of silence.

He felt along the uneven wall, deliberately turning his
back on the door in order that he might not see the least
echo of light; then, inhaling languorously the opiate scent
of the coal, he stared into the darkness and noiselessly
swept his left hand to and fro with his fingers grasping at
the impalpable. The hushed companionable spaces of the
darkness lulled and rocked him, so that he felt no desire to
move ; forgetful of everything, he gased and gazed, breath"
ing deeply, until pinkish stars and waves swam over his
vision, and he felt faint.

With a kind of silent shock his sight cleared again.

61

Opposite him in the black wall there was a sharp thin
vertical line of bright yellow light. It broadened a little
and smeared the coal at his feet with gold; it opened still
wider and he saw, on a level as it seemed with his head,
the bright green head of a tree, still in the sunlight. " Oh,"
he sighed excitedly, and stepped forward, his hands groping
before him. Two stumbles, and he was at the strange
door; his hand flung it back and he crossed the threshold
to a pavement which slept white under the throbbing hot
glory of a wonderful summer sky.

He was on the terrace, smoothly-flagged, of a long and
placid stone house. There was no door behind him, only
a high leaded oriel window with mouldering stone lace*-
work, the first of a line that stood along the converging
avenue of the terrace. Looking through the panes he saw
a long spacious hall to which all the windows belonged,
and on the glassy floor of the room each window flung a
broad stream of sunlight, slightly stained here and there
with red or blue colour.

But though the house was old and beautiful it was not
so beautiful as the landscape that spread beyond the low
stone balustrade of the terrace. From the fishpond at the
parapet's foot fell away the gardens of the house, first a
series of sweeping lawns, then tangled borders of flowers,
then, still sloping downwards towards an encircling valley
in the middle distance, tall trees, and trees behind them,
and gentle multitudes of treetops. The land fell ; and then
in a long gentle slope it rose again; there came ridge after
ridge, softly green, meadows and clumps of trees and lonely
poplars, remote, remote, until the most shadowy pencillings
of land ended in a blue hazie on the verge of sight.
62

Shading his eyes, William for a time stared out over this
rolling territory, watching contentedly the mild shapes of
the woods near him, or screwing his eyes up in a strained
endeavour to see more clearly some uncertain object far
away. The sun shone warm on his cheek, and his hand
was warm on the balustrade; contemplation of this equable
scene lulled him in complete ease and satisfaction. Being
no artist and not very capable of naming things external
or internal, he felt a reposeful elation without knowing or
even asking why ; and it was natural to him not to search
for the date of the house or speculate as to the titles of the
curious and superb blooms that crowded the flower-beds
below. And so fine was the day, so exhilarating the air,
that, although he was normally possessed of a great craving
to explore empty and unknown rooms, he felt no impulse
to look for an entrance into the house.

At the far end of the terrace there was a shrill cry and
a flap of wings. A moulting peacock, one or two long
feathers protruding from the dun shrubbery of his trun'
cated tail, strutted down the balustrade, jerking his shiny
blue neck and nodding his thinned crest. William, hands
in pockets, nonchalantly walked down to meet him ; but
he was shy of approaches and flew up into a tree with
dark green leaves which overhung the corner of the house.
" Oh, you needn't if you don't want to," said William,
and he turned down the broad reach of steps that led to
the first lawn.

It was very pleasant to have no one near; to be master
of one's surroundings and to walk where one liked; to
jump or lie down ; to handle anything one liked : but it
was sufficient to feel this regal loneliness, and he made no

63

attempt to exercise its privileges to any great extent. At
the bottom of the steps he peered for a time into the filmy
green depths of the pond where glided the huge shapes of
ancestral carp, grey before he was born. He sat on the
rim, cooled his hands in the water, and picked at the
lichens on the brickwork. Then he sauntered over the
fresh sunlit grass down between throngs of flowers into
the margin of the wood. A few birds combated their
summer drowsiness with infrequent notes. He looked up
for them and could not find them ; but through the branches
the quivering blue sky was all burning with the sun. He
turned and looked up at the long stone house. There it
sat, firm on its stone bastion : its high tranquil windows
reflecting the sun; its even battlements clearly cut against
the blue behind them; its flanks guarded by tall seneschals
of trees. It seemed as though this place of all places must
be the true centre of the world; so serenely from its height
did it look out over the world and silently command it.

Peace, though he scarcely knew the word, entered the
boy's heart. A red admiral fluttered into the wood's edge
and settled near him on a fretted spray of briar. He watched
it thoughtfully as it opened its gorgeous dark wings with
their red bars or closed them into a single rich upright leaf.
It flew away, upward through the branches towards the
sky. Quietly he followed its flight; quietly he turned
away ; slowly he walked up the slope, concerned for nothing
but to breathe the soft air and unhurriedly gase at the scene
around him. He looked again at the profusion of cups and
stars and bells in the flower-beds, and the even verdure of
the lawns; he watched for a while the slow motion of the
great fishes in the pond, and then again he climbed to the
64

sweet and stately dignity of the terrace windows, and
surveyed the wide magnificence of the country that rolled
away with its wooded ridges to the verge of sight. As he
stood there behind the balustrade drinking with childish
eyes the enchanted expanse of earth, there flooded in upon
him, though he knew not its name, one great luxurious
rhythm that lifted him away with massive and resistless
swell. His head grew dizzy; pinkish waves and stars swam
before his eyes ; and out of darkness he awoke in a dismal
coal'cellar, very damp, aching in all his limbs, and afraid of
what would happen to him.

Such are the pleasures, and such, unhappily, the rewards
of sensual delights and the obliviousness of duty.

65

A TALE FOR POSTERITY

HERE was a man in my day who
fell in love. He was a young man,
and not out of the common in genius
or virtue. His passion was certainly
violent in that, although it did not
make him assume the mien and gait
of an invalid dog, or wait behind
door to stab a supposed rival, it
despoiled him of sleep, which had
hitherto been his constant possession. Lust, or, as a tact'
ful contemporary of mine has termed it, the emphatic wish
to be an ancestor, may have been the rock on which his
radiant dream-castle was built; if so, he was unaware of
it, and, after the most scrutinous analysis of his own feel-
ings, honestly declared to himself that it was not so. It
was some time before he spoke of what was in his heart
to the woman with whom he was in love. He found a
delight in her presence and in her conversation, which was
sensible, humorous and sympathetic ; he thought she shared
his pleasure, and he saw clearly that she was interested in
his nature and his opinions and preferences ; but he shrank
from opening his heart to her. This was partly owing to
his pride, which made him unwilling to display himself to
a woman of whom he was not sure, and who he feared
might pity him ; it was also in part born of a fastidiousness
which made him perceive something indecent and dis-
courteous in suddenly thrusting another person into a
situation which she might possibly find awkward and pos-
sibly even painful. Consequently, though occasionally in
her presence he could not help being silent, and though
now and then his heart tightened and a slight swelling

69

came into his throat, he had not the strength to resist the
assumption of a moodily-sorrowful air and the wish that
something about him might convey to her the message
that he had neither the courage nor, as he thought it, the
ungentlemanliness to speak, and he kept his secret for months.
Whether or not it was likely that he should find favour
in this woman's eyes he did not, curiously enough, specu-
late. In his own heart he was not by any means modest.
He thought himself — as we all think ourselves — a person
of vast powers, unlimited capabilities, and a sensibility
that marked him off from the mass of men. He knew that
he had never given material and visible proof of these
great qualities, and he could not in reason expect, though
he sometimes half hoped, that other people would detect
them by intuition or from some ethereal glint in his eyes.
Granted, as he was inclined to grant to himself, that he
was a conglomerate of Hector, Hamlet, Sophocles and
Lancelot, he suspected that neither in his behaviour, which
was of wont timid and hesitating, nor in his speech, from
which he habitually excluded both rhetoric about the con-
stitution of the world and intimate expression of his own
deeper feelings and most cherished ambitions, had he allowed
his inner nature to be revealed. Sometimes it occurred to
him that he told her nothing of his gorgeous imaginations,
or of the powers of which, given the incentive to effort,
he was capable in the world of action — in war, in politics,
and even in commerce. He had not, unfortunately, been
taught music, but magnificent symphonies and orchestral
odes were always ringing in his head ; and he had half a
mind to learn his notes and write his compositions down.
Of painting a similar thing was true ; pictures were done
70

by purblind people who could not see things either as de*
corations or as syllables of the spirit; they had over him'
self the sole, wretched advantage that they had been
schooled in the manual craft of the business. He it was,
potentially and therefore really, who wrote the poems of
the age ; who nailed his flag to the mast, and went down
splendidly singing; who rallied a scattered people and
swept mis 'government from its seat; who filled a thousand
ports with his grains and cloths and spices ; who drove
tunnels through the loftiest and most adamantine moun'
tain chains. But he had no desire to boast or to expose him*
self to anybody. Persons of penetration, shrewd judges of
character, could see things for themselves, and she was, of
course, such a one. But in reality he did not ask himself
whether or not she knew anything of all this. He examined
his own feelings, but he did not examine or attempt to
imagine hers; he merely wished mutely and very strongly
that she did not think him a fool, and especially that she
would not think him a fool and want to laugh when he
told her that he loved her.

What finally provoked him to speech was this. It was
intolerable to think that she might at any time contract
herself by hazard, in a moment of abstraction as it were,
to some man for whom she did not care and whom she
might live to detest. He had it in his power perhaps, not
only to save himself from mental torture, but to save her
from a desolate or miserable life. So he decided that he
must take the irretrievable step, although the thought of
it made him quake and shiver.

They were outdoors one fine still evening (the moon
was shining, but that was an accident and might not have

71

happened), and he said what he had meant to say on
several previous occasions. Her face was pale and com'
posed, and, in an unthinking pose which struck him — he
rarely took notice of such things — as unusually beautiful,
she was looking, chin on hand, out over the level country
with its sparse trees and its strips of water silver to the
moon. He explained himself quite suddenly in a couple
of jerky sentences, worded casually and spoken in a tone
of detached, almost scientific, impersonality. She did laugh,
and she did call him a fool; but he found that there are
divers ways of doing this.

In the more intimate relationship of confessed lovers
they were extremely happy. Nevertheless, he did not lose
his judgment or his mental balance. He had no illusions
about his lady; he quite coldly admitted to himself that she
had certain faults, and that such-and-such other women
excelled her in this or that respect; although, when all
things were taken into account, she was superior to any
woman of his acquaintance. Occasionally as time went
on, so calculating and self-controlled was he, he asked him-
self whether he was really in love with her any longer.
This did not happen when he had been away from her for
any considerable period, or when his eyes were catching
hers in sympathy or in amusement. At such times as
those he was certain ; but at other times he often wondered
whether his continued fidelity was not due perhaps to
sluggardly habit or cowardly romanticism rather than to
any permanent strength of feeling. Were not the plashes
and tinklings he heard in his breast but the echoes of the
old flowing of a fountain that had ceased to flow? If they
were, he desired to know it; for he was interested in the
72

truth about himself, and more especially in the truth about
men.

Frequently, therefore, he would put it to himself
whether he had not fallen in love again with some other
person. Compunctions about such inquiry he considered
to pertain rather to the kingdom of sentimental fiction
than to that of reality; and he had no desire to tell him'
self any lies. He quite appreciated the social advantages
that might attach to general lifelong monogamy, and he was
not unsusceptible to the poetic glamour which centuries
had cast over the idea of that condition. He even admitted
that, under some circumstances, in this regard as in others,
it might be desirable, it might even be an imperative duty,
that a man should resist the gratification of his own
inclinations. But even at that, failing the extreme case,
he would have had — for his blood, like the blood of all ot
us, was mingled cold and warm — difficulty in pursuing his
inclinations when he had ascertained them.

He admitted that it was conceivable that the woman
might retain her love (for, respecting a milder affection, he
had no doubt that it would endure for life on both sides)
for him after he had lost his for her. A similar change might
have taken place the other way round. But he had (so he
told me, and I respected him for it) a theory which made
him ready to meet such emergencies. He held that jealousy
was the worst of crimes. He was not hypocrite enough
to pretent to be entirely immune from it. At the time of
his first falling in love he had felt jealousy towards some
persons unknown, and he had never been able to stifle a
gentle pang when his lady told him of the girlish attrac'
tions she had felt for other men — a terrible lot of fools;

73

that was the worst of it — before he, the glowing and
irresistible planet, had swum into her ken. Had she at
any subsequent time left him for another, such feelings must
again have affected him ; but (and in this he appeared
quite sincere) he would have fought them as unreasonable
and ungenerous, and, above all, as witnesses of a desire to
make encroachment on the liberty of another. This
attitude, to his thinking, should be shared, and he held
that he was right in acting on the assumption that it was
shared.

And so he often asked himself whether he was not in
love with one of his other woman friends. But (said he)
the curious thing was that he never obtained a satisfac-
tory answer to his question. Cynthia had straight un-
shrinking eyes, calm hands, and a profound insight into
life and beauty. He never tired of her presence, but he
drew back from the thought of touching her lips or her
hair; it would have seemed, he knew not why, a profana'
tion. Merope he loved as a man loves a man; for Lesbia,
a dark'flushed beauty, most candid and generous, he ex-
perienced a physical attraction which he believed could
only persist so long as it had no indulgence ; it was like a
faint, shining bubble that will burst and vanish at the
first touch. Here he saw no possibility of fulness, there of
stability; here the spirit was unmoved, there the body
lethargic and dumb. Yet, whenever he had to answer his
questionings with a "no," he experienced (so he confided
in me) doubts as to the accuracy of his answer. Had he
not perhaps, he would muse, faced the inquiry not squarely
but with the furtive glance of one in sick haste to escape?
Had he not allowed his judgment to be prejudiced before-
74

hand by a timorous flinching from a breach with convert'
tion, a weak tendency not to fling a rude stone into the
tranquil stream of his companion's existence, a craven and
constitutional aversion from conclusions which must in'
duce decisive and irrevocable action? Thus he would
thresh his brain, beating about in blind and bewildered
manner like a frightened bat in a cave. Sometimes, in the
hope of arriving at clarity of mind and a well-tempered
resolution, he would go out into a solitary place where he
would commune with the placid afternoon skies, sitting
with firm -shut lips and eyes remotely fixed. The end of
such communion was always doubt and a sigh.

When I last met him, four or five years ago, he had
arrived at no conclusion. One thing that, it seemed, had
not occurred to him was that he didn't deserve his luck.
Another was that, in the natural course of things, his
speculations would be interrupted. I did not like to tell
him: and, even if I had done so, he would have been
ready with an answer.

And if, my dear descendants, it is your open boast, or
even your secret pride, that you have attained a muddled
complexity of feeling and hesitancy of belief not previously
known, you are making a boast or nursing a pride which
is much older than yourselves, and much older than
myself.

75

THE BASKET OF FLOWERS

T was a basket. Where
had it come from?

The basket lay upon its
side on the sunny ground,
[t was one of those old-
fashioned very shallow
baskets, with a small bot'
torn, and sides opening out
widely like the petals of a
^reat gaping flower. It was
straw -coloured and so
delicately made as to seem almost weightless ; and it had a
long hoop of a handle that was decorated with small bows
of dainty pink and light-blue silk ribbon. It had been
placed there very carefully with its load of pink roses and
blue periwinkles that flowed over the wide rim; and for
some reason, either of ceremony or of taste, it had been
made the centre of a design of complete symmetry. Just
below it on the turf lay crossed a rake and a shepherdess's
crook. Upwards from it there curved two crescent ropes
of roses that were tied at their junction with a silken true-
lovers' knot; from each side extremity curling horns of
roses fell along the turf; and down over the middle of the
basket's side fell a light string of intertwined periwinkles.
The effect of the whole arrangement was ravishing.
Basket, flowers, and ground, beautiful in their colours,
seemed nevertheless all to have been steeped in some rare
pale common medium that gave them a more than ordinary
harmony. The art of the arrangement was artless; the
exactitude so perfect as to seem almost casual; the basket,
the flowers, and the ribbons might almost have fallen by

79

some miraculous spontaneity into their places; and had
the wind moved one petal of one flower or straightened
the ribbons of a single knot it would have shattered the
fragile beauty of the whole design.

But how did they get there? Whence, in a world
gone harsh, had come these appurtenances of a day passed
long ago, or a day, perhaps, that had never been at all?
This basket; these mounded and interwoven flowers; this
crook for the meekest of be'ribboned sheep; this slender
rake, made to draw nothing more substantial than dead
flowers or fallen leaves? What Perdita had strayed here
from what remote pastures? and whither had she gone?

For the flowers were fresh. There had been no one in
sight when my eyes first caught that meadow. After my
first happy ecstasy at coming upon so beautiful a thing, I
could not help scanning under a shading hand all the fields
around for some glimpse of a retreating muslin gown. But
the silence was intense, the solitude complete; and, though
I fancied I saw beside the basket the feint print of a small
shoe, it was uncertain.

I stood and gased at the basket of flowers, a slight mist
over my eyes ; and I let my mind wander as it liked. A
flash as of lightning shimmered before me; when my eyes
cleared I saw, not one maiden, but two young girls in thin
white dresses come running towards me over the grass
with laughter like tinkling bells. One came in front with
a basket swung upon her arm and a great heap of flowers
held lightly to her breast and trailing over her gown; and
the other, following close, clasped in her bare brown arms
a little rake and a crook. They stopped, never seeing me,
near the place where I stood, laid their burdens upon the
80

ground, sat down, laughing in each other's eyes, and
stopped for breath.

They were slim and of equal height. But one had black
hair and eyes, and a skin, naturally pale, burnt evenly
brown by the sun; and the other had hair glinting light
brown and large grey eyes, and cheeks the ruddiness of
which glowed softly through her tan. "Oh, I am almost
tired," said the dark one. " Come along, let's arrange it,"
replied the other, kneeling up ; and, taking the basket from
her arm, she held it in front of her knees. The other,
suddenly recovering her energy, sprang up and knelt in
front of her and poured a mass of roses into the basket.
"Where shall it go?" she asked. "Just here," said the fair
one, pointing to a plateau of grass at my feet, " this is a
pretty place for it." So they carried their loads over, laid
the basket of flowers on the ground, and with delicate
flutterings of their fingers drew out small streamers of peri'
winkle tendrils with their beautiful little green leaves and
squared blue flowers. Then they began twining roses into
chains with ribbons from their dresses as binding. And
as they worked they chattered and sang little fragments of
songs. "Aren't they beautiful?" ;' Yes, one might think
they had been picked to'day." "Isn't it rather a joke?
Somebody will find it; if only he knew when they were
really picked wouldn't it give him a surprise?"

They began to hurry as they gave the final twines to
the girdling ropes. "We must make haste," said the girl
with the black hair. "Finished now, I think," said the
other, with a laugh of pleasure. " Whatever on earth made
us come here and do this?" asked the dark one, looking
up and knitting her brows with comical charm. "Good'

81

ness knows! but weVe done it now." "Yes," and the
other stood up and put her hands on her hips, "come
along; we must get back at once or some fool will see us."

They stood there a moment with hands on each other's
slender strong shoulders, and surveyed their work. "Come
along," said the dark one. "Let's run!"

They turned, and with the swiftness and grace of
young does fled over the meadows until their wavering
garments disappeared behind the nearest clump of trees.

Unable to move, I stared after them. The atmosphere
in front of me began to spin and revolve and turn inside
out. And, alas ! there were no trees and no meadows ; but
only a basket of flowers on the wall'paper in a bedroom
in a Manchester hotel.

8Z

BARNETT AND HARRISON

HE other two men having gone,
Barnett and Harrison moved their
armchairs close up to the fire, one
on each side. The only electric light
burning was behind them, shining
faintly in the gloom half' way up
towards the library's lofty ceiling,
and red reflections from the fire
dabbled the men's collars and shirt'
fronts. Barnett finished his cigar and dropped it into the
grate. He did not light another, but with one hand in
his pocket, the other holding his whisky on the arm of his
chair, and his feet stretched out before him, stared into the
fire.

His thoughts were clearly wandering, and rather
gloomily. There was an almost sulky look about his
puffy but strong and not unhandsome face. Resentment
against something unseen tightened the muscles around
his eyes, and now and then his wide hard mouth wavered,
as it were, into a slight sneer. There was always some'
thing impressive about his reserve, and in this mood there
was a heightened fascination about him. The younger
man, whose features wore a candour common amongst
youths who have just passed through an English University,
watched his face steadily.

After several minutes Barnett frowned, jerked his head
back impatiently, and twisted in his chair. Young Harrison,
aware of a sudden constraint, thought it time to break the
silence ; for he had not known his companion long. " You
were talking," he said, " of Germany. Have you ever
lived in Germany."

85

"Yes," replied Barnett, tapping the fender with his
slipper, " I lived there for a year."

"Where? Berlin?"

"Oh, yes; Berlin, Munich, Dresden, Heidelberg, and
so on."

Silence again fell. The clock ticked and the fire rippled.
Harrison essayed again. " You know Russia at all? " he
asked.

" Yes, I know Russia pretty well."

"St. Petersburg?"

"Yes, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, Kieff, Nov'
gorod."

A new respect came over the young man's eyes. He
wondered who this fellow was ; why he should have
wandered like this from place to place; and what kind of
sins and follies he had committed. Had he some picturesque
history; was he well'known under some other name; what
secrets did his ugly mouth conceal; and why should he
be here to'iiight, wearing a mask before three respectable
Englishmen who were his guests at dinner? Examining
the lines of his face, Harrison felt a little uneasy and even
afraid. And so sharply did Barnett resume the conversa'
tion that the young man started.

" I have lived in Germany, yes," said Barnett, fixing his
burning brown eyes on Harrison, and giving a brutal little
laugh. " I have been in Russia ; I am familiar with every
other country in Europe, from Lapland to Calabria and
from Portugal to the Urals. I have lived among Turks as
a Turk, I have canoed about the upper arms of the
Amazon, I know all the places in India that anyone could
ever want to see, and I have dug for gold in Australia."
86

The younger man, fascinated, felt a desire to see how
far the catalogue could be extended. "Have you travelled
in China?" he asked.

" I have been all over the place in China," replied Bar*
nett, "and," jerking a little nasal laugh, " I have spent for
no particular reason a considerable time in Bokhara and
Samarcand, which have romantic names on false pretences."

"It must be ripping to have been all over the shop
like that," murmured Harrison with innocent eagerness.

A sudden flood of hot energy seemed to flow into
Barnett. His fist beat his knee; his eyes glowed with a
contemptuous fire and his mouth writhed like a snake's
back. "H'm," he said harshly, "do I look as if I enjoyed
myself? Do I look like a man who muses happily over
packets of fragrant memories? I have covered the
world; and I will tell you one thing: it is the same every '
where, sometimes filthy and always tedious. I had your
views when I was your age. Whenever I thought of a
place I went to it; and when you go to a place you spoil
it. Even now sometimes I get weak and imagine I could
find pleasure if I went back to the East Indies, where the
skies are hot blue and the sun's biasing gold and the sea
sleeps below shores of incredible vegetation. But if I went
there I should be sick of it in a day."

To Harrison's surprise the man then stood up and
spread out his hands, and, with a fierce remote look in his
eyes, began speaking in a high hollow voice like that of
an actor in some dreamy play.

"Come up," he said, "come up, my friend, into this
high tower. The endless lake of night is around us and
the stars that we cannot escape are over our heads. Look

87

out, now, where my hand sweeps round over this
globular earth that rolls incessantly through space. Over
there in front of us the seas and continents curve away ;
here they lie in darkness and down there they are lit by
the sun. Away there to my left and again to my right
the cold waters roll away until they congeal in rough
frozen deserts white under the moon. On the other side
of the world the monotonous populations of men are run'
ning in and out of their nests, and building little houses,
and digging holes in the ground, and cooking, and making
love, and beating animals. The light creeps on and on
towards us, and every minute it wakes a tract of sleeping
men and insects into activity. They rise; they are rising
now, in Siberia and China and the Indies; and as these
come into the light others leave it, and others, farther
behind, put out their lamps and go to sleep in their beds.
In this place where my finger points the people are black,
and go naked in small clearings in the middle of tangled
woods. In this other place they are in white robes and
they bathe in thousands by the banks of a broad yellow
river. Down there, look, there are bearded men with red
shirts who walk about streets of low tin houses; and up
there they are yellow and beardless and simmer in con-
fused wooden cities scrawled with absurd signs. There
they are ; they stay there ; they multiply or decrease. They
level small hills and burn forests and make straight canals
from river to river and put out upon the sea in boats with
sail or smoke to cross from one coast to another. Jump
with me like a grasshopper from spot to spot. Leap five
thousand miles ; you can land where you like, and though
you cannot understand their jargons, they will all say the

same things to you. They will all have the same eyes and
the same feet and everywhere some will be giving birth
and some will be dying. You can see them all over this
rounded surface, a crowd here crouching sullen under
those thunderbolts and another there lying sweating and
exhausted in that hot stretch of sun. I ask you, is it not
insufferably wearisome? Select any patch and plunge into
the middle of them; walk and talk with them and your
questions will never be answered nor will you do any'
thing you have never done before. And you also, your
skin each moment grows imperceptibly more wrinkled,
your bones stiffen and the colour fades from your hair."
He stopped, jerked his fists, and then in a voice of com'
mand cried : " Stand here, stand still, do not move, set your
mouth, never close your eyelids, stare like marble, grasp
the balcony firmly, look at the ground below and fear it
not. If your fool of a heart aches, kill it!"

It was a peculiar outburst; and as the man stopped,
Harrison shivered and felt cold. His next feeling was an
awkwardness as of one who has invaded some embarass'
ing intimacy. He stood up, looked sheepishly at his feet,
laughed to reestablish his self- confidence, and then whisked
some soda into his glass and drank it off. As though he had
only just remembered the time, he looked at the clock ; he
affected surprise at the lateness of the hour, and said : " By
Jove, I had no idea it was so late. I simply must be going.
Thanks awfully."

Barnett very courteously showed him out.

89

THE PELICAN PRESS

GOUGH SQUARE E.G.

PR Squire, (Sir) John Ceilings

6037 The gold tree

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